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THE BITTER CRY

OF

OUTCAST LONDON.

1

1

. AN INQUIRY INTO

THE CONDITION OF

I THE ABJECT POOR.

LONDON :

JAMES CLARKE & CO.,

13, Fleet Steeet, E.C.

*** ^^ desire thankfully to acknowledge the assistance kindly
afforded us in the pursuit of our investigations by the Secretary and
Agents of the London City Mission, and also by the Rev. A. G.
BROWN of the East London Tabernacle, and his Missionaries.

All communications should be addressed to Rev. ANDREW
MEARNS, London Congregational Union, Memorial Hall, Farringdon
Street, E.G.

THE BITTER CRY

OF

OUTCAST LONDON.

There is no more hopeful sign in the Christian Church of
to-day than the increased attention which is being given by it
to the poor and outcast classes of society. Of these it has
never been wholly neglectful ; if it had it would have ceased
to be Christian. But it has, as yet, only imperfectly realised
and fulfilled its mission to the poor. Until recently it has
contented itself with sustaining some outside organizations,
which have charged themselves with this special function,
or what is worse, has left the matter to individuals or to
little bands of Christians having no organization. For the
rest it has been satisfied with a superficial and inadequate
district visitation, with the more or less indiscriminate
distribution of material charities, and with opening a few
rooms here and there into which the poorer people have
been gathered, and by which a few have been rescued. All
this is good in its way and has done good ; but by all only
the merest edge of the great dark region of poverty, miser}^,

4 THE BITTER CRY

squalor and immorality has been touched. We are not
losing sight of the London City Mission, whose agents are
everywhere, and whose noble work our investigations have
led us to value more than ever, but after all has been done
the churches are making the discovery that seething in the
very centre of our great cities, concealed by the thinnest
crust of civilization and decency, is a vast mass of moral
corruption, of heart-breaking misery and absolute godless-
ness, and that scarcely anything has been done to take into
this awful slough the only influences that can purify or
remove it.

Whilst we have been building our churches and solacing
ourselves with our religion and dreaming that the millennium
was coming, the poor have been growing poorer, the
wretched more miserable, and the immoral more corrupt ;
the gulf has been daily widening which separates the lowest
classes of the community from our churches and chapels,
and from all decency and civilization. It is easy to bring
an array of facts which seem to point to the opposite con-
clusion— to speak of the noble army of men and women who
penetrate the vilest haunts, carrying with them the blessings
of the gospel ; of the encouraging reports published by
Missions, Reformatories, Refuges, Temperance Societies ;
of Theatre Services, Midnight Meetings and Special
Missions. But what does it all amount to ? We are
simply living in a fool's paradise if we suppose that all
these agencies combined are doing a thousandth part of
what needs to be done, a hundredth part of what cctild be

^ \

U.UC,

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 5

done by the Church of Christ. We must face the facts ;
and these compel the conviction that THIS terrible flood
OF SIN AND MISERY IS GAINING UPON US. 'It is rising every
day. This statement is made as the result of a long, patient
and sober inquiry, undertaken for the purpose of discovering
the actual state of the case and the remedial action most
likely to be effective. Convinced that it is high time some
combined and organized effort was made by all denomina-
tions of Christians, though not for denominational purposes,
the London Congregational Union have determined to open
in several of the lowest and most needy districts of the
metropolis, suitable Mission Halls, as a base of operations
for evangelistic work. They have accordingly made this
diligent search, and some of the results are set forth in the
following pages, in the hope that all who have the power
may be stimulated to help the Union in the great and
difficult enterprise which they have undertaken.

Two cautions it is important to bear in mind. First, the
information given does not 7'cfer to selected cases. It simply
reveals a state of things which is found in house after house,
court after court, street after street. Secondly, there has
been absolutely no exaggeratioii. It is a plain recital of plain
facts. Indeed, no respectable printer would print, and
certainly no decent family would admit even the driest
statement of the horrors and infamies discovered in one
brief visitation from house to house. Sofarf?'oni making
the worst of our facts for the piwpose of appealijig to einotwft,
lue h.ive been compelled to tone dozun everything, and wholly

6 THE BITTER CRY

to omit what 7nost needs to be known^ or the ea7's and eyes of
our readers would have been insufferably outraged. Yet
even this qualified narration must be to every Christian
heart a loud and bitter cry, appealing for the help which it
is the supreme mission of the Church to supply. It should
be further stated that our investigations were made in the
summer. The condition of the poor during the winter
months must be very much worse.

NON-ATTENDANCE AT WORSHIP.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to say of the hundreds of
thousands who compose the class referred to, that very few
attend any place of worship. It is a very tame thing to say,
and a very little thing compared with what must follow, but
it is needful to a proper statement of our case. Before
going to the lower depths, where our investigations were
principally carried on, Ave find in the neighbourhood of Old
Ford, in 147 consecutive houses, inhabited for the most part
by the respectable working class, 212 families, 118 of which
never, under any circumstances, attend a place of worship.
Out of 2290 persons living in consecutive houses at Bow
Common, only 88 adults and 47 children ever attend, and as
64 of these are connected with one Mission Hall, only 24
out of the entire number worship elsewhere. One street off
Leicester Square contains 246 families, and only 12 of these
are ever represented at the house of God. In another street
in Pentonville, out of 100 families only 12 persons attend
any sanctuary, whilst the number of attendants in one

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 7

diatrict of St. George's-in-the-East is 39 persons out of
4235. Often the numbers given of those who do attend
include such as only go once or twice a year, at some charity
distribution, so that our figures are more favourable than the
actual facts. Constantly we come across persons who have
never been to church or chapel for 20 years, 28 years, more
than 30 years ; and some persons as old as 64 never re-
member having been in a place of worship at all. Indeed,
with the exception of a very small proportion, the idea of
going has never dawned upon these people. And who can
wonder .'' Think of

THE CONDITION IN WHICH THEY LIVE.

We do not say the condition of their homes, for how can
those places be called homes, compared with which the
lair of a wild beast would be a comfortable and healthy
spot ? Few who will read these pages have any conception
of what these pestilential human rookeries are, where tens
of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which
call to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of
the slave ship. To get into them you have to penetrate courts
reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from
accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions
and often flowing beneath your feet ; courts, many of them
which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a
breath of fresh air, and which rarely know the virtues of a drop
of cleansing water. You have to ascend rotten staircases,
which threaten to give way beneath every step, and which,

8 THK BITTER CRY

in some places, have already broken down, leaving gaps that
imperil the limbs and lives of the unwary. You have to
grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming
with vemiin. Then, if you are not driven back by the
intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in
which these thousands of beings who belong, as much as
you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together. Have
you pitied the poor creatures who sleep under railway arches,
in carts or casks, or under any shelter which they can find
in the open air ? You will see that they are to be envied in
comparison with those whose lot it is to seek refuge here.
Eight feet square — that is about the average size of ver}' many
of these rooms. Walls and ceiling are black with the accre-
tions of filth which have gathered upon them through long
years of neglect. It is exuding through cracks in the boards
overhead ; it is running down the walls ; it is everywhere.
What goes by the name of a window is half of it stuffed v»ith
rags or covered by boards to keep out wind and rain ; the
rest is so begrimed and obscured that scarcely can light enter
or anything be seen outside. Should you have ascended to
the attic, where at least some approach to fresh air might be
expected to enter from open or broken window, you look out
upon the roofs and ledges of lower tenements, and discover
that the sickly air which finds its way into the room has to
pass over the putrefying carcases of dead cats or birds, or
viler abominations still. The buildings are in such miserable
repair as to suggest the thought that if the wind could only
reach them they would soon be toppling about the heads of

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 9

their occupants. As to furniture — you may perchance dis-
cover a broken chair, the tottering relics of an old bedstead,
or the mere fragment of a table ; but more commonly you
will find rude substitutes for these things in the shape of
rough boards resting upon bricks, an old hamper or box
turned upside down, or more frequently still, nothing but
rubbish and rags.

Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses
a family, often two. In one cellar a sanitary inspector reports
finding a father, mother, three children and four pigs ! In
another room a missionary found a man ill with small pox, his
wife just recovering from her eighth confinement, and the
children running about half naked and covered with dirt.
Here are seven people living in one underground kitchen,
and a little dead child lying in the same room. Else-
where is a poor wddow, her three children, and a child
who had been dead thirteen days. Her husband, who was
a cabman, had shortly before committed suicide. Here
lives a widow and her six children, including one daughter
of 29, another of 21, and a son of 27. Another apartment
contains father, mother and six children, two of whom are
ill with scarlet fever. In another nine brothers and sisters,
from 29 years of age downwards, live, eat and sleep together.
Here is a mother who turns her children into the street in
the early evening because she lets her room for immoral
purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little
wretches creep back again if they have not found some
miserable shelter elsewhere. Where there are beds they

lO THE BITTER CRY

are simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings or straw, but
for the most part these miserable beings huddle together
upon the filthy boards. The tenant of this room is a widow,
who herself occupies the only bed, and lets the floor to a
married couple for 2s. 6d. per week. In many cases matters
are made worse by the unhealthy occupations followed by
those who dwell in these habitations. Here you are choked
as you enter by the air laden with particles of the superfluous
fur pulled from the skins of rabbits, rats, dogs and other
animals in their preparation for the furrier. Here the smell
of paste and of drying match-boxes, mingling with other
sickly odours, overpowers you ; or it may be the fragrance of
stale fish or vegetables, not sold on the previous day, and
kept in the room overnight. Even when it is possible to do
so the people seldom open their windows, but if they did it is
questionable whether much would be gained, for the external
air is scarcely less heavily charged with poison than the
atmosphere within.

Wretched as these rooms are they are beyond the means of
many who wander about all day, picking up a living as they
can, and then take refuge at night in one of the common
lodging-houses that abound. These are often the resorts of
thieves and vagabonds of the lowest types, and some are kept
by receivers of stolen goods. In the kitchen men and women
may be seen cooking their food, washing their clothes, or
lolling about smoking and gambling. In the sleeping room
are long rows of beds on each side, sometimes 60 or 80 in
one room. In many cases both sexes are allowed to herd

OF OUTCAST LONDON. II

together without any attempt to preserve the commonest
decency. But there is a lower depth still. Hundreds cannot
even scrape together the two-pence required to secure them
the privilege of herding in those sweltering common sleeping
rooms, and so they huddle together upon the stairs and
landings, where it is no uncommon thing to find six or eight
in the early morning.

That people condemned to exist under such conditions
take to drink and fall into sin is surely a matter for little
surprise. We may rather say, as does one recent and
reliable explorer, that they are "entitled to credit for not
being twenty times more depraved than they are." One
of the saddest results of this over-crowding is the inevitable
association of honest people with criminals. Often is the
family of an honest working man compelled to take refuge in
a thieves' kitchen ; in the houses where they live their rooms
are frequently side by side, and continual contact with the
very worst of those who have come out of our gaols is a
matter of necessity. There can be no question that numbers
of habitual criminals would never have become such, had
they not by force of circumstances been packed together
in these slums with those who were hardened in crime.
Who can wonder that every evil flourishes in such hotbeds
of vice and disease 1 Who can wonder that little children
taken from these hovels to the hospital cry, when they are
well, through dread of being sent back to their former misery?
Who can wonder that young girls wander off into a life of
immorality, which promises release from such conditions }

12 THE BITTER CRY

Who can wonder that the public-house is " the Elysian field
of the tired toiler ? "

IMMORALITY

is but the natural outcome of conditions like these.
** Marriage," it has been said, '• as an institution, is not
fashionable in these districts." And this is only the bare
truth. Ask if the men and women living together in these
rookeries are married, and your simplicity will cause a smile.
Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Nobody expects that they
are. In exceptional cases only could your question be
answered in the affirmative. Incest is common ; and no
form of vice and sensuality causes surprise or attracts
attention. Those who appear to be married are often
separated by a mere quarrel, and they do not hesitate to
form similar companionships immediately. One man was
pointed out who for some years had lived with a woman, the
mother of his three children. She died and in less than a
week he had taken another woman in her place. A man
was living with a woman in the low district called " The
Mint." He went out one morning with another man for the
purpose of committing a burglary and by that other man was
murdered. The murderer returned saying that his com-
panion had been caught and taken away to prison ; and the
same night lie took the place of the murdered man. The
only check upon communism in this regard is jealousy and
not virtue. The vilest practices are looked upon with the most

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 1 3

matter-of-fact indifference. The low parts of London are the
sink into which the filthy and abominable from all parts of
the country seem to flow. Entire courts are filled with
thieves, prostitutes and liberated convicts. In one street
are 35 houses, 32 of which are known to be brothels. In
another district are 43 of these houses, and 428 fallen
■women and girls, many of them not more than 12 years of
age. A neighbourhood whose population is returned at
10,100, contains 400 who follow this immoral traffic, their
ages varying from 13 to 50 ; and of the moral degradation
of the people, some idea may be formed from an incident
which was brought to our notice. An East-end missionary
rescued a young girl from an immoral life, and obtained
for her a situation with people who were going abroad. He
saw her to Southampton, and on his return was violently
abused by the girl's grandmother, who had the sympathy of
her neighbours, for having taken away from a poor old
woman her means of subsistence.

The misery and sin caused by drink in these districts
have often been told, but these horrors can never be set
forth either by pen or artist's pencil. In the district
of Euston Road is one public-house to every 100 people,
counting men, women and children. Immediately around
our chapel in Orange Street, Leicester Square, are 100
gin-palaces, most of them very large ; and these districts
are but samples of what exists in all the localities which
we have investigated. Look into one of these glittering
saloons, with its motley, miserable crowd, and you may

14 THE BITTER CRY

be horrified as you think of the evil that is nightly-
wrought there ; but contrast it with any of the abodes which
you find in the fetid courts behind them, and you will wonder
no longer that it is crowded. With its brightness, its excite-
ment and its temporary forgetfulness of misery, it is a
comparative heaven to tens of thousands. How can they
be expected to resist its temptations ? They could not live
if they did not drink, even though they know that by drinking
they do worse than die. All kinds of depravity have here
their schools. Children who can scarcely walk are taught
to steal, and mercilessly beaten if they come back from their
daily expeditions without money or money's worth. JNlany of
them are taken by the hand or carried in the arms to the gin-
palace, and not seldom may you see mothers urging and
compelling their tender infants to drink the fiery liquid.
Lounging at the doors and lolling out of windows and
prowling about street corners were pointed out several well-
known members of the notorious band of " Forty Thieves,''
who, often in conspiracy with abandoned women, go out
after dark to rob people in Oxford Street, Regent Street
and other thoroughfares. Here you pass a coffee-house,
there a wardrobe shop, there a tobacconist's, and there a
grocer's, carrying on a legitimate trade no doubt, but a
far different and more remunerative one as well, especially
after evening sets in, — all traps to catch the unwary.
These particulars indicate but faintly the moral influences
from which the dwellers in these squalid regions have no
escape, and by which is bred " infancy that knows no

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 1 5

innocence, youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is
mature in nothing but suffering and guilt, blasted old age
that is a scandal on the name we bear."

Another difiiculty with which we have to contend, and one
in large measure the cause of what we have described, is the

POVERTY

of these miserable outcasts. The poverty, we mean, of those
who try to live honestly ; for notwithstanding the sickening
revelations of immorality which have been disclosed to us,
those who endeavour to earn their bread by honest work far
outnumber the dishonest. And it is to their infinite credit
that it should be so, considering that they are daily face to
face with the ccn':rast between their wretched earnings and
those which are the produce of sin. A child seven years old
is known easily to make los. 6d. a week by thieving, but what
can he earn by such work as match-box making, for which 23d.
a gross is paid, the maker having to find his own fire
for drying the boxes, and his own paste and string ? Before
he can gain as much as the young thief he must make 56 gross
of match-boxes a week, or 1296 a day. It is needless to say
that this is impossible, for even adults can rarely make more
than an average of half that number. How long then must
the little hands toil before they can earn the price of the
scantiest meal ! Women, for the work of trousers finishing (/,<?.,
sewing in linings, making button-holes and stitching on the
buttons) receive 2|d. a pair, and have to find their own thread.
We ask a woman who is making tweed trousers, how much

1 6 THE BITTER CRY

she can earn in a day, and are told one shilling. But
what does a day mean to this poor soul? Seve7itee7i Jioicrs !
From five in the morning to ten at night — no pause for
meals. She eats her crust and drinks a little tea as she
works, making in very truth, with her needle and thread, not
her living only, but her shroud. For making men's shirts
these women are paid lod. a dozen ; lawn tennis aprons,
3d. a dozen; and babies' hoods, from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d.
a dozen. In St. George's-in-the-East large numbers of women
and children, some of the latter only seven years old, are
employed in sack-making, for which they get a farthing each.
In one house was found a widow and her half idiot daughter
making palliasses at \'\d.. each. Here is a woman who has a
sick husband and a little child to look after. She is employed
at shirt finishing at 3d. a dozen, and by the utmost effort
can only earn 6d. a day, out of which she has to find her own
thread. Another, with a crippled hand, maintains herself and
a blind husband by match-box making, for which she is re-
munerated on the liberal scale mentioned above ; and out
of her 2.id. a gross she has to pay a girl a penny a gross to
help her. Others obtain at Covent Garden in the season id.
or 2d. a peck for shelling peas, or 6d. a basket for Avalnuts ;
and they do well if their labour brings them lod. or a shilling
a day. With men it is comparatively speaking no better.
" My master," says one man visited by a recent writer in the
Fortnightly Review, "gets a pound for what he gives me
3s. for making." And this it is easy to believe, when we
know that for a pair of fishing boots which will be sold at

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 1 7

three guineas, the poor workman receives $s. 3d. if they are
made to order, or 4s. 6d. if made for stock. An okl tailor
and his wife are employed in making policemen's overcoats.
They have to make, finish, hot-press, put on the buttons,
and find their own thread, and for all this they receive
2s. lod. for each coat. This old couple work from half-past
six in the morning until ten at night, and between them can
just manage to make a coat in two days. Here is a
mother who has taken away whatever articles of clothing
she can strip from her four little children without leaving
them absolutely naked. She has pawned them, not for
drink, but for coals and food. A shilling is all she can
procure, and with this she has bought seven pounds of coals
and a loaf of bread. We might fill page after page with
these dreary details, but they would become sadly mono-
tonous, for it is the same everywhere. And then it should
not be forgotten how hardly upon poverty like this must
press the exorbitant demand for rent. Even the rack-
renting of Ireland, which so stirred our indignation a little
while ago, was merciful by comparison. If by any chance
a reluctant landlord can be induced to execute orpay for some
lung-needed repairs, they become the occasion for new
exactions. Going through these rooms we come to one in
which a hole, as big as a man's head, has been roughly
covered, and how? A piece of board, from an old soap-
box, has been fixed over the opening by one nail, and to
the tenant has been given a yard and a half of paper with
which to cover it ; and for this expenditure — perhaps 4d. at

B

1 8 THE BITTER CRY

the outside — threepence a week has been put upo7i the rent.
If this is enough to arouse our indignation, what must be
thought of the following? The two old people referred to
above have lived in one room for 14 years, during which
time it has only once been partially cleansed. The landlord
has undertaken that it shall be done shortly, and for the past
three months has been taking 6d. a week extra for rent for
what he is thus going to do. This is what the helpless have
to submit to ; they are charged for these pestilential dens
a rent which consumes half the earnings of a family, and
leaves them no more than from 4d. to 6d. a day for food,
clothing and fire ; a grinding of the faces of the poor which
could scarcely be paralleled in lands of slaveiy and of
notorious oppression. This, however, is not all ; for even
these depths of poverty and degradation are reached by
the Education Act, and however beneficent its purpose, it
bears with cruel weight upon the class we have described,
to whom twopence or a penny a week for the school fees
of each of three or four children, means so much lack of
bread.

Amidst such poverty and squalor it is inevitable that one
should be constantly confronted with scenes of

HEART-BREAKING MISERY —

misery so pitiful that men whose daily duty it has been for
years to go in and out amongst these outcasts, and to be
intimately acquainted with their sufferings, and who might,
therefore, be supposed to regard with comparatively little

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 1 9

feeling that which would overwhelm an unaccustomed
spectator, sometimes come away from their visits so oppressed
in spirit and absorbed in painful thought, that they know not
whither they are going. How these devoted labourers can
pursue their work at all is a marvel, especially when it is
remembered that the misery they actually see suggests to
them the certain existence of so much more which no human
eye discovers. Who can even imagine the suffering which
lies behind a case like the following ? A poor woman in an
advanced stage of consumption, reduced almost to a skeleton,
lives in a single room with a drunken husband and five
children. When visited she was eating a few green peas.
The children were gone to gather some sticks wherewith a
fire might be made to boil four potatoes which were lying
on the table, and which would constitute the family dinner
for the day. Or, take another case, related by Rev.
Archibald Brown, who, with his missionaries is doing a
noble work amongst the poor in the east of London.
People had doubted the accuracy of reports presented
by the missionaries, and he accordingly devoted a
considerable time to personal visitation and inquiry.
He found case after case proving that but little of the
wretchedness had been told, and here is a /at'r specimen.
At the top of an otherwise empty house lived a family ; the
husband had gone to try and find some work. The mother
29 years of age, was sitting on the only chair in the place in
front of a grate, destitute of any fire. She was nursing a
baby only six weeks old, that had never had anything but

20 THE BITTER CRY

one old rag round it. The mother had nothing but a gown
on, and that dropping to pieces ; it was all she had night or
day. There were six children under 13 years of age. They
were barefooted, and the few rags on them scarcely covered
their nakedness. In this room, where was an unclothed
infant, the ceiling was in holes. An old bedstead was in the
place, and seven sleep in it at night, the eldest girl being on
the floor.

This is bad, but it is not the worst. In a room in
Wych Street, on the third floor, over a marine store
dealer's, there was, a short time ago, an inquest as to the
death of a little baby. A man, his wife and three children
were living in that room. The infant was the second child
who had died, poisoned by the foul atmosphere ; and this
dead baby was cut open in the one room where its parents
and brothers and sisters lived, ate and slept, bccmise the
j)arish had 110 iiiortiiary and ?io 7'oovi z?i luhich post inortems
could be performed I No wonder that the jurymen who went
to view the body sickened at the frightful exhalations. This
case was given by Mr. G. R. Sims, in his papers on " How
the Poor Live ; " but all the particulars are found in the dry
newspaper reports of the inquest. In another miserable
room are eight destitute children. Their father died a short
time ago, and " on going into the house to-day," says the
missionary, "the mother Avas lying in her coffin." Here is
a filthy attic, containing only a broken chair, a battered
saucepan and a few rags. On a dirty sack in the centre of
the room sits a neglected, ragged, bare-legged little baby

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 21

girl of four. Her father is a militiaman, and is away. Her
mother is out all day and comes home late at night more or
less drunk, and this child is left in charge of the infant that
we see crawling about the floor ; l.eft for six or eight hours
at a stretch — hungry, thirsty, tired, but never daring to move
from her post. And this is the kind of sight which may be
seen in a Christian land where it is criminal to ill-treat a
horse or an ass.

The child-misery that one beholds is the most heart-
rending and appalling element in these discoveries ; and
of this not the least is the misery inherited from the
vice of drunken and dissolute parents, and manifest in
the stunted, misshapen, and often loathsome objects that
we constantly meet in these localities. From the be-
ginning of their life they are utterly neglected ; their
bodies and rags are alive with vermin ; they are subjected
to the most cruel treatment ; many of them have never seen
a green field, and do not know what it is to go beyond the
streets immediately around them, and they often pass
the whole day without a morsel of food. Here is one of
three years old picking up some dirty pieces of bread and
eating them. We go in at the doorway where it is standing
and find a little girl twelve years old. " Where is your
mother?" "In the madhouse." "How long has she been
there?" "Fifteen months." "Who looks after you?"
The child, who is sitting at an old table making match-
boxes, replies, " I look after my little brothers and sisters
as well as I can." " Where is your father? Is he in work?"*

22 THE BITTER CRY

*' He has been out of work three weeks, but he has gone to
a job of two days this morning." Another house visited
contains nine motherless children. The mother's death
^vas caused by witnessing one of her children being run over.
The eldest is only fourteen years old. All live in one small
room, and there is one bed for five. Here is a poor woman
deserted by her husband and left with three little children.
One met with an accident a few days ago and broke his arm.
He is lying on a shake-down in one corner of the room, with
an old sack round him. And here, in a cellar kitchen, are
nine little ones. You can scarcely see across the room for
smoke and dirt. They are without food and have scarcely
any clothing.

It is heart-crushing to think of the misery suggested
by such revelations as these ; and there is something un-
speakably pathetic in the brave patience with which the
poor not seldom endure their sufferings, and the tender
sympathy which they show toward each other. Where,
amongst the well-conditioned, can anything braver and
kinder be found than this? A mother, Avhose children are the
cleanest and tidiest in the Board School which they attend,
was visited. It was found that, though she had children of her
own, she had taken in a little girl, Avhose father had gone off
tramping in search of work. She was propped up in a chair,
looking terribly ill, but in front of her, in another chair, was
the wash-tub, and the poor woman was making a feeble
effort to wash and wring out some of the children's things.
She was dying from dropsy, scarcely able to breathe and

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 23

enduring untold agony, but to the very last striving to keep
her little ones clean and tidy. A more touching sight it
would be difficult to present ; we might, however, unveil
many more painful ones, but must content ourselves with
saying that the evidence we have gathered from personal
observation more than justifies the words of the writer before
referred to, that " there are (z>., in addition to those who
find their way to our hospitals) men and women who lie and
die day by day in their wretched single rooms, sharing all
the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold, and
waiting without hope, without a single ray of comfort, until
God curtains their staring eyes with the merciful film of
death."

WHAT IT IS PROPOSED TO DO.

That something needs to be done for this pitiable outcast
population must be evident to all who have read these
particulars as to their condition — at least, to all who
believe them. We are quite prepared for incredulity. Even
what we have indicated seems all too terrible to be true.
But we have sketched only in faintest outline. Far more
vivid must be our colours, deeper and darker far the shades,
if we are to present a truthful picture of " Outcast London ; "
and so far as we have been able to go we are prepared with
evidence, not only to prove every statement, but to show that
these statements represent the general condition of thousands
upon thousands in this metropolis. Incredulity is not the
only difficulty in the way of stirring up Christian people to

24 THE BITTER CRY

help. Despair of success in any such undertaking may-
paralyse many. We shall be pointed to the fact that without
State interference nothing effectual can be accomplished
upon any large scale. And it is a fact. These wretched
people must live somewhere. They must live near the
centres where their work lies. They cannot afford to go
out by train or tram into the suburbs ; and how, with their
poor emaciated, starved bodies, can they be expected — in
addition to working twelve hours or more, for a shilling, or
less, — to walk three or four miles each way to take and
fetch ? It is notorious that the Artizans Dwellings Act has,
in some respects, made matters worse for them. Large
spaces have been cleared of fever-breeding rookeries, to
make way for the building of decent habitations, but the
rents of these are far beyond the means of the abject poor.
They are driven to crowd more closely together, in the
few stifling places still left to them ; and so Dives makes a
richer harvest out of their misery, buying up property con-
demned as unfit for habitation, and turning it into a gold-mine
because the poor must have shelter somewhere, even though
it be the shelter of a living tomb.

The State must make short work of this iniquitous
traffic, and secure for the poorest the rights of citizenship ;
the right to live in something better than fever dens ;
the right to live as something better than the uncleanest
of brute beasts. This must be done before the Christian
missionary can have much chance with them. But because
we cannot do all we wish, are we to do nothing^? Even

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 2$

as things are something can be accomplished. Is no
lifeboat to put out and no life-belt to be thrown because
only half a dozen out of the perishing hundreds can be
saved from the wreck? The very records which supply
the sad story we have been telling, give also proofs of
what can be done by the Gospel and by Christian love
and- tact and devotion. Gladly do many of these poor
creatures receive the Gospel. Little match-box makers are
heard singing at their toil, " One more day's work for Jesus."
*' If only mother was a Christian we should all be happy,"
said one ; and on his miserable bed, amidst squalor and
want and pain, a poor blind man dies with the prayer upon
his lips, " Jesus, lover of my soul. Let me to Thy bosom fly.''
Another whites, " You have filled my heart with joy, and my
little room with sunshine." A second, who now regularly
attends a place of worship, says, speaking of the visits of the
missionary, " Before he came to visit me I used to sit and
make match-boxes on Sunday, but a word now and then has
enabled me to look up to the Lord. I don't feel like the
same person." Another who himself became a missionary
to his own class, and exercised great power over them when-
ever he spoke, was able to say, " I was as bad as any of
you, but the Lord Jesus had mercy upon me, and has made
me better and so happy." This man had been a "coal-
whipper" of notoriously evil life, and was rescued through
his casually going into a room in one of the courts of
which we have spoken, where a missionary was holding a
meeting. Such results should rebuke our faithlessness.

26 THE BITTER CRY

Even in these dark and noisome places the lamp of Life
may be kindled ; even from these miry spots bright gems
may be snatched, worth all the labour and all the cost.

It is little creditable to us that all our wealth and effort
should be devoted to providing for the spiritual needs of those
who are comfortably conditioned, and none of it expended
upon the abject poor. It is true that we have not half done
our duty to any class, but this fact is no justification of our
having wholly neglected this rescue work. To shut up our
compassion against those who need it most, because we have
not yet done our duty to those who need it less, is a course
that we should find it hard to justify to our Master and Lord.
His tones were ever those of pitying love even to the most
sinful outcast, but would they not gather sternness as He met
us with the rebuke : " This ought ye to have done, and not
to have left the other undone " ? An " exceeding bitter cry "
is this which goes up to heaven from the misery of London
against the apathy of the Church. It is time that Christians
opened their ears to it and let it sink down into their hearts.
Many pressing needs are taxing the resources of the London
Congregational Union, but the Committee feel that this work
amongst the poor must no longer be neglected, and that they
must do all they can to arouse the Churches of their order to
undertake their share of responsibility. They have deter-
mined to take immediate action. Having selected three of
the very worst districts in London, from which many of the
foregoing facts have been gathered, they have resolved at
once to begin operations in the very heart of them. No

I

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 2/

denominational purpose will sway them, except that they will

try to awaken their own denomination to a sense of its duty ;

but there will be no attempt to make Congregationalists or

to present Congregationalism. Deeper, broader and simpler

must this work be than any which can be carried on upon

denominational lines. In such a forlorn hope there is no

room for sectarianism. The Gospel of the love of Christ

must be presented in its simplest form, and the one aim in

everything must be to rescue and not to proselytize. Help

will be thankfully welcomed from whatever quarter it may

come, and help will be freely given to other workers in the

same field, if only by any means some may be saved.

It is impossible here and yet to give details as to the

methods which it is proposed to pursue ; suffice it to

say that in each district a Mission Hall will be erected,

or some existing building transformed into a Hall having

appliances and conveniences requisite for the successful

prosecution of the Mission. Services and meetings of all

kinds will be arranged, and, as far as possible, an agency for

house to house visitation organized. An attempt must be

made to relieve in some wise and practical, though ver}'-

limited way, the abounding misery, whilst care is taken to

prevent the abuse of charity. In this matter the injudicious

and inexperienced may easily do more harm than good,

pauperising the people whom they wish to help, and making

hypocrites instead of Christians. To indicate what we mean

wc may mention one case pointed out to us of a woman who

attended three different places of worship on the Sunday and

28 THE BITTER CRY

some others during the week, because she obtained charitable
help from all. But we cannot on this account refuse to try
some means of mitigating the suffering with which we come
into contact. Therefore this must be attempted along with
whatever other means the Committee, in conference with
those who have had long experience of this work, may think
likely to answer the end they have before them. Their hope
is that at least some, even of the lowest and worst, may be
gathered in ; and their aim will be to make as many of these
as they can missionaries to the others ; for manifestly those
who have been accustomed to speak to and work amongst a
somewhat better section of the community will not be so likely
to labour successfully amongst these outcasts as will those
who have themselves been of their number. The three
districts already fixed upon are, as it will be understood,
intended only to afford a field for the immediate commence-
ment of this beneficent work. Other districts will be occupied
as funds come in and the resources of the Committee are
enlarged ; but even the comparatively limited operations
already undertaken will necessitate so great an expenditure
and require so much aid from those who are qualified for the
work, that they cannot wisely attempt more at present. For
not only will the cost and furnishing of Halls and of carrying
on the work be very large, but a relief fund will be needed
as indicated above. The Committee, therefore, can only
hope to carry forward with any success the project to
which they have already put their hands, by the really
devoted help of the churches which they represent.

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 29

DESCRIPTION OF THE DISTRICTS.

The district known as Collier's Rents is one of the three to
which attention will first be given, and the old chapel, long
disused, is now in the builders' hands and will soon be ready
for opening, not as a chapel, but as a bright, comfortable, and
in every way suitable Hall. It would be impossible to find
a building better situated for working among the very poor
and degraded than this. It stands in a short street, leading
out of Long Lane, Bermondsey, the locality in which were re-
cently found the bodies of nine infants, which had been depos-
ited in a large box at the foot of some stairs in an undertaker's
shop. There are around the Hall some 650 families, or 3250
people, living in 123 houses. The houses are largely occupied
by costermongers, birdcatchers, street singers, liberated
convicts, thieves and prostitutes. There are many low
lodging-houses in the neighbourhood of the worst type.
Some of them are tenanted chiefly by thieves, and one
was pointed out which is kept by a receiver of stolen goods.
In some cases two of the houses are united by means of a
passage which affords a ready method of escape in case
of police interference.

Turning out of one of these streets you enter a narrow
passage, about ten yards long and three feet wide. This
leads into a court eighteen yards long and nine yards
wide. Here are twelve houses of three rooms each, and
ccntaining altogether 36 families. The sanitary condition
of the place is indescribable. A large dust-bin charged with

30 THE BITTER CRY

all manner of filth and putrid matter stands at one end cf
the court, and four water-closets at the other. In this
confined area all the washing of these 36 families is
done, and the smell of the place is intolerable. Entering
a doorway you go up six or seven steps into a long
passage, so dark chat you have to grope your way by the
clammy, dirt-encrusted wall, and then you find a wooden
stair, some of the steps of which are broken through.
Ascending as best you can, you gain admission to one of the
rooms. You find that although the front and back of the
house are of brick, the rooms are separated only by
partitions of boards, some of which are an inch apart. There
are no locks on the doors and it would seem that they can
only be fastened on the outside by padlock. In this room to
which we have come an old bed, on which are some evil-
smelling rags, is, with the exception of a broken chair, the only
article of furniture. Its sole occupant just now is a repulsive,
half-drunken Irishwoman. She is looking at some old ragged
garments in hope of being able to raise something upon them
at the pawnshop, and being asked if she is doing this because
she is poor, she gets into a rage and cries, " Call me poor ?
I have got half a loaf of bread in the house, and a little
milk ; " and then from a heap of rubbish in one corner,
she pulls out a putrid turkey, utterly unfit for human
food, which she tells us she is going to cook for dinner.
This woman has just " done seven days "' for an assault
upon a police officer. We find that she has a husband,
but he " spends almost all his money at the public-house.

OF OUTCAST LONDON. 3 1

Rooms such as this are let furnished (!) at 3s. 6d. and 4s. a
week, or 8d. a night, and we are told that the owner is
getting from 50 to 60 per cent, upon his money.

And this is a specimen of the neighbourhood. Reeking
courts, crowded public-houses, low lodging-houses and
numerous brothels are to be found all around. Even the
cellars are tenanted. Poverty, rags and dirt everywhere.
The air is laden with disease-breeding gases. The mis-
sionaries who labour here, are constantly being attacked by
some malady or other resulting from blood poisoning, and
their tact and courage are subjected to the severest tests.
In going about these alleys and courts no stranger is safe if
alone. Not long ago a doctor on his rounds was waylaid by
a number of women, who would not let him pass to see his
patient until he had given them money ; and a bible-woman,
visiting " Kent Street," was robbed of most of her clothing.
Even the police seldom venture into some parts of the
district except in company. Yet bad as it is there are
elements of hopefulness which encourage us to believe that
our work will not be in vain. Many of its denizens would
gladly break away from the dismal, degrading life they are
leading, if only a way were made for them to do so ; as it is
they are hemmed in and chained down by their surroundings
in hopeless and helpless misery.

Such is Collier's Rents. To describe the other two localities
where our work is to be commenced, in Ratcliff and Shadwell,
would, in the main, be but to repeat the same heart-sickening
story. Heart-sickening but soul-stirring. We have opened

32 THE BITTER CRY OF OUTCAST LONDON.

but a little way the door that leads into this plague-house of
sin and misery and corruption, where men and women and
little children starve and suffer and perish, body and soul.
But even the glance we have got is a sight to make one weep.
We shall not wonder if some, shuddering at the revolting-
spectacle, try to persuade themselves that such things cannot
be in Christian England, and that what they have looked
upon is some dark vision conjured by a morbid pity and a
desponding faith. To such we can only say, Will you venture
to come with us and see for yourselves the ghastly reality ?
OtherSj looking on, will believe, and pity, and despair. But
another vision wull be seen by many, and in this lies our hope
— a vision of Him who had " compassion upon the multitude
because they were as sheep having no shepherd," looking,
with Divine pity in His eyes, over this outcast London, and
then turning to the consecrated host of His Church with the
appeal, " Whom shall we send and who will go for us ? -'

October. 188-^.

Printers : Warrex Hall & Lovitt, SS, Camden Road, N.W.

\

Oh, Thou, who once on earth, beneath the weight

Of our mortality, didst live and move,

The incarnation of profoundest love ;

Who on the Cross that love didst consummate —

Whose deep and ample fulness could embrace

The poorest, meanest, of our fallen race :

How shall we e'er that boundless debt repay ?

By long loud prayers in gorgeous temples said ?

By rich oblations on Thine altars laid ?

Ah, no ! not thus Thou didst appoint the way.

When Thou wast bowed our human woe beneath.

Then, as a legacy. Thou didst bequeath

Earth's sorrowing children to our ministry —

And, as we do to them we do to Thee.

Anne Charlotte Lynch.

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